In the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted May 10-May 13, 55% of respondents say that the economy will be better in a year if Mitt Romney is elected president, compared to 46% who say the economy will be better if President Obama is reelected.

These results are far from surprising. Nearly every poll since Romney became the presumptive Republican nominee has shown that Americans rate Romney better on the economy than Obama.

But what has Romney done to prove that he would have handled the economy better than the President?

Over the next few posts, I’ll examine three of Romney’s most notable positions on the economy.

By the way, anyone who’s hoping to see another article about how Romney ruined companies and fired workers while he was CEO at Bain Capital will be sorely disappointed. This post isn’t about Romney’s record in the private sector. It’s about his record and statements on the economy and on the current state of economic stagnation.

Part 1: Foreclosures

In interviews and in the Republican presidential debates, Romney frequently said that the best thing for the government to do was stop intervening in the housing market with programs such as HAMP and HARP. According to him, the government should just let the foreclosure process run its course.

He said, “Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it [the housing market] turn around and come back up. … The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure process … that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.”

Sounds good, right? He is correct that there is a “foreclosure overhang” in this country. A foreclosure overhang happens when so many borrowers are behind on their mortgages that banks just can’t keep up. The problem is, Romney’s plan would have made the foreclosure overhang much worse than it is.

Let me explain how.

If the government had allowed the foreclosure process to run its course, many of the estimated 14.7 million underwater homeowners would have been thrown out of their homes.

Ignore, for a moment, the immense human suffering this plan would have caused. Foreclosures on such an immense scale would have resulted in an even greater supply of distressed properties on the market and would have added to the already significant foreclosure backlog.

It would also have further depressed property values, making more homeowners underwater, and it would have made the road to recovery even longer and more treacherous than it already is.

The Obama administration’s HAMP and HARP programs, on the other hand, have kept borrowers in their homes and kept them paying their mortgages, thereby reducing banks’ foreclosure backlogs. Borrowers that aren’t being foreclosed upon or evicted are also more likely to spend money on “luxury” items (items not crucial for survival), which helps support the economy.

In other words, Romney’s plan would have added to the “foreclosure overhang”, while President Obama’s has reduced it by reducing the number of people who are behind on their loans.

Where did Romney think investors and aspiring homeowners would get the money to buy all those foreclosed properties, anyway? Banks have become extraordinarily risk-averse since the housing market collapsed, making it exceedingly difficult for even the most creditworthy borrowers to get loans.

Even with government intervention through programs like HAMP and HARP, US home prices are just beginning to stabilize (maybe). How much longer would it have taken if Mitt Romney had been President during the housing crisis?